IT'S BASEBALL SEASON @ ALPS

4/21/2014

Baseball is back!

While the season officially started three weekends ago with a Dodgers-Diamondbacks (GO-DBACKS!) tilt in Australia and continued with another NL West battle on the night of March 30th—this time with the Dodgers and Padres—Opening Day represented the true start of the 2014 campaign.

After a long, cold winter—literally in most parts of America—baseball returned. As with most great events, it was worth the wait.

The biggest positive takeaway to this point may be the fact that AZ D-Back Miguel Montero is starting to hit and looks like he could again make an impact in the middle of the lineup.

PHYSICS IN ACTION

Baseball players don't know how to hit the ball, says inventor and retired science teacher John Garver. His tips could help baseball players double their batting averages. By applying the rules of physics, Garver has figured out strategies that could radically change the game -- if players will take his advice.

Baseball is not the only sport that illustrates physics phenomena. Consider how different sports -- football, soccer, bobsledding, hockey, bowling and others -- demonstrate the concepts of energy, work, friction and inertia. Would knowing the science behind a sport help a person become a better athlete? Why or why not?
What makes a curve ball curve? The stitches on a ball actually make it curve. The pitcher's fingers hold the ball along a seam, so when the ball is thrown with a snapping motion, it has topspin. Friction provided by the stitches causes a thin layer of air to move around the spinning ball in such a way that air pressure on top of the ball is greater than on the bottom, causing the ball to curve downward -- and the batter to miscalculate the position of the ball.
The curve ball phenomenon described in the preceding paragraph occurs partly because of the relationship between the pressure of a fluid and its velocity. Does this principle sound familiar? It was determined by 18th-century Swiss scientist and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli and is known as the Bernoulli principle. According to this theory, the faster a fluid moves, the less pressure it exerts. Where do we usually see an application of Bernoulli's principle? (flight aerodynamics)
How does the Bernoulli principle apply to baseball? A spinning baseball has more air turbulence on top of the ball, producing slower air speed over the ball. Meanwhile, air moving under the ball accelerates and moves faster, producing less pressure on the bottom of the ball. The ball moves downward faster than would normally be expected.